“My fault!” he said. “It was presumptuous to attempt too much. But now all is well with me. All is very well!”
Since his chief need was clearly of rest, they were left to make themselves comfortable in their small chamber, though the evening brought them a number of visits. The bearded steward brought them hot, spiced wine, and sent in to them the old woman Edgytha, who brought them water for their hands, food, and a lamp, and offered whatever more they might need for their comfort.
She was a tall, wiry, active woman probably sixty years old, with the free manner and air of authority habitual in servants who have spent many years in the confidence of lord or lady, and earned a degree of trust that brings with it acknowledged privilege. The younger maidservants deferred to her, if they did not actually go in awe of her, and her neat black gown and stiff white wimple, and the keys jingling at her waist bore witness to her status.
Late in the evening she came again, in attendance on a plump and pleasant lady, soft-voiced and gracious, who came to inquire kindly whether the reverend brothers had all that they needed for the night, and whether the one who had swooned was now comfortably recovered from his faintness, Cenred’s wife was rosily pretty, brown-haired and brown-eyed, a very different creature from the tall, slender, vulnerable young thing who had stepped out of the solar, to be startled into recoil from the unexpected apparition of strangers.
“And have the lord Cenred and his lady any children?” Cadfael asked when their hostess was gone.
Edgytha was close-lipped, possessively protective of her family and all that was theirs, to the point of rendering every such inquiry suspect, but after a moment’s hesitation she answered civilly enough: “They have a son, a grown son.” And she added, unexpectedly reconsidering her reluctance to satisfy such uncalled-for curiosity: “He’s away, in service with my lord Cenred’s overlord.”
There was a curious undertone of reserve, even of disapproval, in her voice, though she would never have acknowledged it. It almost distracted Cadfael’s mind from his own preoccupation, but he pursued delicately:
“And no daughter? There was a young girl looked into the hall for a moment, while we were waiting. Is she not a child of the house?”
She gave him a long, steady, searching look, with raised brows and tight lips, plainly disapproving of such interest in young women, coming from a monastic. But guests in the house must be treated with unfailing courtesy, even when they fall short of deserving it.
“That lady is the lord Cenred’s sister,” she said. “The old lord Edric, his father, married a second time in his later years. More like a daughter to him than a sister, with the difference in years. I doubt you’ll see her again. She would not wish to disturb the retirement of men of your habit. She has been well brought up,” concluded Edgytha with evident personal pride in the product of her own devotion, and a plain warning that black monks cast by chance into the household should deep their eyes lowered in a young virgin’s presence.
“If you had her in charge,” said Cadfael amiably, “I make no doubt she does credit to her upbringing. Had you Cenred’s boy in your care too?”
“My lady would not have dreamed of trusting her chick to any other.” The old woman had warmed into fond fervor in thinking of the children she had nursed. “No one ever had the care of better babes,” she said, “and I love them both like my own.”
When she was gone Haluin lay silent for a while, but his eyes were open and clear, and the lines of his face alert and aware.
“Was there indeed a girl who came in?” he said at last, frowning in the effort to recall a moment which had become hazy and uncertain in his mind. “I have been lying here trying to recall why I so started up. I remember the crutches dropping away from under me, but yery little besides. Coming into the warmth made my head go round.”
“Yes,” said Cadfael, “there was a girl. Half sister, it seems, to Cenred, but younger by some twenty years. If you were thinking you dreamed her, no, she was no dream. She came into the hall from the solar, all unaware of us, and perhaps not liking the look of us, she drew back again in haste and closed the door between. Do you not remember that?”
No, he did not remember it, or only as an unconnected snatch of vision comes back out of a dream, and is gone again as soon as glimpsed. He frowned after it anxiously, and shook his head as if to clear eyes misted by weariness. “No… there’s nothing clear to me. I do recall the door opening, I take your word for it she came in… but I can recall nothing, no face… Tomorrow, perhaps.”
“We shall see no more of her,” said Cadfael, “if that devoted dragon of hers has any say in the matter. I think she has no very high opinion of monks, Mistress Edgytha. Well, are you minded for sleep? Shall I put out the lamp?”
But if Haluin had no clear recollection of the daughter of the house, no image left from that brief glimpse of her, first a dark outline against candlelight, then lit from before by the ruddy glow of the torch, Cadfael had a very clear image, one that grew even clearer when the lamp was quenched and he lay in the dark beside his sleeping companion. And beyond the remembrance he had a strange, disquieting sense that it bore for him a special significance, if he could but put his finger on it. Why that should be so was a mystery to him. Wakeful in the dark, he called up the features of her face, the motion of her body as she stepped into the light, and could find nothing there that should have been meaningful to him, no likeness to any woman he had ever seen before, except as all women are sisters. Yet the sense of some elusive familiarity about her persisted.
A tall girl, though perhaps not so tall as she gave the impression of being, for her slenderness contributed to the image, but above the middle height for a girl just becoming woman. Her bearing was erect and graceful, but still with the tentative and vulnerable springiness of the child, the suddenness of a lamb or a fawn, alert to every sound and motion. Startled, she had sprung back from them, and yet she had closed the door with measured softness, not to startle in return. And her face-she was not beautiful, except as youth and innocence and gallantry are always beautiful. An oval face she had, tapered from broad brow and wide and wide-set eyes to the firm, rounded chin. Her head was uncovered, her brown hair drawn back and braided, still further emphasizing the high white brow and the great eyes under their level dark brows and long lashes. The eyes consumed half the face. Not pure brown, Cadfael thought, for in spite of their darkness they had a clarity and depth and brightness perceptible even in that one glimpse of her. Rather a dark hazel shot with green, and so clear and deep it seemed possible to plunge into them and drown. Eyes utterly candid and vulnerable, and quite fearless. Young, wild, mettlesome creatures of the woods never yet hunted or harmed, may have that look. And the pure, fine lines of her cheekbones Cadfael remembered, elegant and strong, after the eyes her chief distinction.
And in all of this, sharply defined in his mind’s eye, what was there to trouble him, to pierce him like an elusive memory of some other woman? He found himself summoning up, one by one, the faces of women he had known, half the population of a long and varied life, in case some cast of features or carriage of head or gesture of hand should strike the chord that would vibrate and sing for him. But there was no match, and no echo. Cenred’s sister remained unique and apart, haunting him thus only because she had appeared and vanished in a moment, and he would probably never see her again.
Nevertheless, the last fleeting vision within his eyelids as he fell asleep was of her startled face.
By morning the air had lost its frosty bite, and most of the snow that had fallen had already thawed and vanished, leaving its tattered laces along the foot of every wall and under the bole of every tree. Cadfael looked out from the hall door, and was inclined to wish that the fall had persisted, to prevent Haluin from insisting on taking to the road again immediately. As it turned out he need not have worried, for as soon as the manor was up and about its daily business Cenred’s steward came looking for them, with the request that they would come to his lord in the solar after they had broken their fast, for he had something to ask of them.